Amongst Women by John McGahern

Author:John McGahern [McGahern, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780571195268
Publisher: Faber
Published: 1990-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘Everybody’s tired now. We’ll get to bed. Anything that has to be gone into can be gone into in the morning,’ Rose said.

Moran glared at her. He seemed about to brush her out of the way to seize the boy but drew back. ‘You can thank your lucky stars the woman’s here.’

‘He hit me,’ the boy sobbed.

‘And I’ll damn well show you what it is to be hit the next time you come into the house at this hour. You’re not going to do anything you like while I’m here.’

‘I’ll go away,’ the boy shouted self-pityingly.

‘Everybody’s tired. Look at the time it is. You can’t be coming in at this time. You had poor Daddy and everybody else worried to death about you,’ Rose scolded and managed to shepherd both men to their rooms without further trouble.

‘I’ll see that gentleman in the morning,’ Moran warned. ‘He needn’t think he’s getting away with anything in this house.’

Rose got him away to school early in the morning but it was only a postponement. During the weekend Michael had the good sense to stay well in the background and Mona and Sheila came from Dublin for the weekend, which postponed any confrontation further still. Moran was so taken up with the girls and their life in Dublin that he hardly noticed him.

These visits of his daughters from London and Dublin were to flow like relief through the house. They brought distraction, something to look forward to, something to mull over after they had gone. Above all they brought the bracing breath of the outside, an outside Moran refused to accept unless it came from the family. Without it there would have been an ingrown wilting. For the girls the regular comings and goings restored their superior sense of self, a superiority they had received intact from Moran and which was little acknowledged by the wide world in which they had to work and live. That unexamined notion of superiority was often badly shaken and in need of restoration each time they came home. Each time he met them at the station his very presence affirmed and reaffirmed again as he kissed them goodbye. Within the house the outside world was shut out. There was only Moran, their beloved father; within his shadow and the walls of his house they felt that they would never die; and each time they came to Great Meadow they grew again into the wholeness of being the unique and separate Morans.

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